Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was a gifted writer of poetry and fiction whose life ended all too soon. Triggered by the death of her father when she was eight years old, a deep-rooted depression took root and led to a life of struggle. She made no pretense about the degree of her pain in her writings. Plath’s poetry is part of the “confessional movement,” frank and revelatory about her personal life and innermost thoughts.

As her depression deepened, her family and success weren’t enough to keep her from taking her own life. She was only thirty, and had two small children. After her death, more of her work was released, and continues to be widely studied writings. Colossus was the only work published during her life, and her Collected Poems, edited and published by her husband Ted Hughes after her death, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

Major works

• The Bell Jar
• Ariel
• The Colossus and Other Poems
• Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
• The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
• The Collected Poems

More Information

• Sylvia Plath on Wikipedia
• Sylvia Plath Home Page
• Sylvia Plath Forum
• A Celebration, this is sylviaplath.info
• Sylvia Plath Info

Visit

• The Plath Diaries – University College, Dublin
• Sylvia Plath’s Grave - St Thomas a Beckett Churchyard, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England

Sylvia Plath Quotes

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.”

“I write only because, There is a voice within me, That will not be still.”

“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.”

“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.”

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”

“I took a deep breath, and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”